Sony
Corporation is a tremendous Japanese success story producing consumer
electronics and associated services. The
company was incorporated on 7 May 1946 as Tokyo Telecommunications
Engineering Corporation. Its founders were Ibuka Masaru, whose Japan
Precision Instruments Company had supplied electronic devices during
World War II, and Morita Akio, an applied sciences instructor.

The company name "Sony" was created by combining two words.
One is 'sonus' in Latin, which is the root of the such words as
'sound' and 'sonic'. The other is 'sonny' meaning little son. The
words were used to show that " Sony" is a very small group
of young people who have the energy and passion toward unlimited
creation.

(NYSE:SNE (http://www.nyse.com/about/listed/lcddata.html?ticker=SNE))
is a consumer
electronics corporation
based in Tokyo, Japan.
It was founded by Masaru
Ibuka and Akio
Morita on May
7, 1946
as the Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering with about 20 employees.
Their first consumer product, in the late 1940s,
was a rice boiler. As it grew into a major international corporation,
Sony acquired other companies with longer histories, including Columbia
Records (the oldest continuously produced brand name in recorded
sound, dating back to 1888).
Today Norio
Ohga is Honorary Chairman, Nobuyuki
Idei is Chairman and CEO, and Kunitake
Ando is president of the corporation.

When
Tokyo
Tsushin Kogyo was looking for a romanized name to use to market
themselves, they strongly considered using their initials, TTK.
The primary reason they did not, is that the railway company Tokyo
Kyuko was known as TKK.

The
name "Sony"
was chosen for the brand as a mix of the Latin
word sonus, which is the root of sonic and sound, and the English
word "sunny." At the time of the change, it was extremely
odd for a Japanese company to use Roman letters to spell its name,
much less the phonetic script used in the Japanese writing, instead of
Chinese characters.

The
move was not without opposition; TTK's principal bank at the time, Mitsui,
had strong feelings about the name. They pushed for a name such as
Sony Electronic Industries, or Sony Teletech. Akio
Morita was firm, however, as he did not want the company name tied
to any particular industry. Eventually, both Ibuka and Mitsui Bank's
chairman gave their approval.

In
2000,
Sony had sales of US $63 billion and 189,700 employees. Sony acquired Aiwa
corporation in 2002.
Sony also owns television
channels in India
and channels aimed at Indian communities in Europe.

Sony
has historically been notable for pushing its own in-house standards
for new recording and storage technologies, which are often different
from those of other manufacturers or of market trends and standards.
The most infamous of these was the videotape
format war of the early 1980s,
when Sony marketed its Betamax
system for video
cassette recorders against the VHS
format developed by JVC.
In the end, VHS gained critical mass in the marketplace and became the
worldwide standard for consumer VCRs and Sony had no choice but to
capitulate.

Sony
has continued the same tactic with subsequent technologies; for
example, it pushes its MiniDisc
digital recording format (intended to replace cassette tapes) whilst
rivals favour CD-R
and MP3
instead. Sony also makes heavy use of its Memory
Stick flash memory modules for digital cameras and other portable
devices, which few other manufacturers use. It also attempted to
compete with the Iomega Zip
drive and Imation
Superdisk with their HiFD,
but this proved a severe failure.

Since
the introduction of the MiniDisc format, Sony has attempted to promote
its proprietary audio compression technologies under the ATRAC brand,
against more widely-used formats like MP3 and Windows Media Audio.
Until late 2004,
Sony's various digital portable music players did not support even the
de facto standard MP3 natively, although the software provided with
them would convert MP3 files into the ATRAC formats.

In
2004, the London
Borough of Camden, England
brought Anti
Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) against Sony Music UK and BMG
for alleged fly
posting. Illegal fly posting by the two companies is thought to
save them £8 million a year in advertising costs in Camden and cost
the Borough £250,000 to clean up. Failing to comply with an ASBO can
result in a jail sentence of up to 5 years.

On
July 20th, 2004,
the EU
approved a 50-50 merger between Sony
Music Entertainment and BMG.
The new company will be called Sony
BMG and will, together with RIAA
partner Universal,
control 60% of the world wide music market.

On
September 13th 2004 a Sony-led consortium finalised the deal to
purchase famous film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
for about $5 Billion, including $2Bn in debts.

The
Home Appliance Recycling Law that came into effect in Japan in April
2001 covers four major types of home appliances: televisions,
refrigerators, washing machines and air conditioners. Of these, the
only product that Sony manufactures is televisions (defined as
containing a CRT, and including Aiwa brand models). A total of
approximately 490,000 Sony-manufactured televisions were recycled in
fiscal 2003.
Sony recycled 84% of CRTs in fiscal 2003, while the Home Appliance
Recycling Law requires more than 55%.

Television
Recycling in Japan (Fiscal 2003)

Units
received at collection centers

493,513

Units
recycled

493,207

Total
weight of products processed

12,853
tons

Total
weight of recycled products/materials

10,808
tons

Recycling
ratio

84%

TELEVISION
RECYCLING

Sony
has been developing recycling technology primarily for large
televisions since fiscal 1991. In October 1997, we established the
Recycling Research Center to reinforce this development. Some plants
that recycle Sony-manufactured televisions employ disassembly machines
and other technologies developed by this Research Center. The Research
Center conducts research on actual recycling conditions, and provides
feedback to television designers and engineers so that new products
can be made more easily recyclable.

POLYSTYRENE
FOAM PACKING RECYCLING

Since
January 1999, Sony has been recycling the waste polystyrene foam
generated by the Group companies with a recycling system using
limonene, a substance derived from orange peel. In fiscal 2003,
approximately 99 tons of this foam was collected and recycled into new
polystyrene foam for use as packing material for nearly 360,000
large-size and LCD projection televisions.

RECYCLING
PERSONAL COMPUTERS

From
October 2003 in Japan, the Law for the Promotion of Effective
Utilization of Resources has required the recycling of computers used
by private citizens, in addition to the recycling of personal
computers discarded by corporate users which was already underway.
In fiscal 2003, about 5,000 Sony-manufactured personal computers(*2)
were collected and dismantled to separate metals, plastics and
rechargeable batteries for recycling.